Friday, 01 February 2008

Today was my 100th post. Dont know what to say. I would like to thank my parents for feeding me, the airline for flying here, the school for employing me and the internet for ...

Before I get in to the story of the food fight, I need to explain what Ddakpokki is. Ddakpokki, better written ad Dakpokki, and if you hear it you will swear you are hearing them say Takpokki, is a very popular street food sold here in Korea. Street food means it is sold by little shops and vendors, a bit like the hotdog stands in New York set films.

Ddakpokki is made from rice cakes and cooked with a spicy sauce to which one or two other things might be added. Before you start vomiting at the thought of cooking rice cakes with a sauce, let me explain the concept of rice cakes.

I don’t think that I have seen the “Western” rice cakes in the shops yet, but I haven’t been looking, so I’m sure it exists somewhere. What is being referred to here is a very dense and chewy thingy made from rice flower or something of that nature. It’s about the same size and thickness as normal Penne Pasta, but solid. You get it in other varieties as well, but those aren’t normally used for this purpose.

I have to admit that I love the stuff. It is cheap and it tastes little different at every place that sells it. The snack that I want to talk about in this post, however, is something like dried ddakpokki. It looks more like red macaroni, but I suspect this is made from deep fried rice cake tubes and then coated in flavouring. It has a crap load of sugar as well. This is Korea, after all. The snack is nice, but that is not what I found most interesting

I include in this post photographs of the packaging. The front of the pack is noting to special. Turn it over though, and the fun starts.

First off there is the Ddakpokki character with the fork sticking out his bum. I love the expression on his face. You can just hear him say: “I hate it when that happens”. You can’t see it though because I didn’t enlarge that part enough.

I did enlarge for you the better part. Have a look at this scene. There is a boy sitting in a pot with a lid on hid head and utensils in his hand. Oooooo- K. As if that isn’t weird enough, all the ddakpokkis are looking at him as if he is their god. It makes me think of Men in Black with the creepy creatures in the locker.

As if this isn’t enough, there is a fight happening in the foreground. A FIST fight, between ddakpokki! But we have to go even further. There is one character as if he is the promoter for the fight and another character cheering them on.

What it this all about. How does this have anything to do with the snack? What am I missing here?